We also wish to acknowledge the FAO Netherlands Partnership Programme-supported project, " Using markets to promote the sustainable utilization of crop genetic resources", some of whose materials on crop genetic resources we have drawn upon here.

This paper describes the procedures for a concept-based mapping of two agricultural thesauri, the multilingual AGROVOC, created and maintained by the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the bilingual Chinese Agricultural Thesaurus, created and maintained by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. Conducted under the auspices of FAO’s Agricultural Ontology Service, the mapping project a...

Author Contacs: Timothy J. KRUPNIK, StudentResearcher with WARDA/ ADRAO and Ph.D. Candidate, Environmental Studies (Agroecology). University of California, Santa Cruz. Email: [email protected] and Dr. Makfousse SARR, National Coordinator of the Programme GIPD (FAO) for Senegal. [email protected] Current Research and Evaluation Efforts of the System of Rice Intensification in the Senegal Rive...

The purpose of the present Conceptual Framework document, developed in the context of FAO’s “Initiative to Review and Update National Agricultural, Rural Development and Food Security Strategies and Policies”, is to propose a flexible general approach to addressing food security through agricultural and rural development and direct actions to enhance immediate access to food. The target audienc...

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:  identify two types of policy briefs (advocacy and objective);  describe the characteristics of a policy brief;  describe the structure and contents of a policy brief; and  conceptualize a policy brief about a food security issue. Introduction In this lesson we will take a close look at policy briefs and learn how to produce them. A policy bri...

Last November, Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO, called together a World Summit on Food Security in Rome. Seven of the leaders of the G8 countries (the USA, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Canada and Italy) failed to attend (only Italy’s prime minister was present). Nevertheless, we would like to see a favourable development from the 2009 meeting, held at a time in history whe...

In the mind of the general public, the rural sector is equal to agriculture and for a great majority of policymakers, rural development continues to mean agricultural development. Not surprisingly, it is a sector traditionally covered at the governmental level by the ministries of agriculture, and at the international development level by agencies with an agricultural development mandate such a...